GH2017: the honeymoon is over

[Uveron]

13 minutes ago, stato said:

Totems as well, another Keyword that, for the most part, has no purpose .

I don't know, I just spent a day working on lists that made heavy use of that keyword.  

I think its one that has only limited use, currently but its a good building block to have in the game. 

[Kanamorf]

53 minutes ago, stato said:

Totems as well, another Keyword that, for the most part, has no purpose .

I don't know, is there not a Breyherd unit that gets bonus to hit vs units that are carrying a totem?

 

I think that more of this sort of use of Keywords would be great

[Killax]

1 hour ago, Tasman said:

I agree with most, if not all of what you say here. I'm still a bit disappointed that shooting rules weren't adjusted [ala 40k, at least] as well as that I feel the magic phase should be just that.... a separate phase that comes after movement. It seems restrictive to keep it in the hero phase when heavy shooting armies have the luxury of being able to move and then shoot. Maximizing the effectiveness of those units. 

I kind of agree with you, at the same time, making Shooting expensive enough and making numbers count (with Horde rule cost reductions) is a way to shift the metagame enough away from it to give a whole lot more leeway to drifferent armies.

The result of this is that to me personally it doesn't come as a suprise that most armies can at least compete within a similar "Tier level". I agree that to an extend doing it this way remains a bandaid to what is shaky about the core rules but then again a lot of Age of Sigmar was initially not designed for competative play to begin with. 

1 hour ago, stato said:

I think its too much to ask of them to change the core rules for a game that is only 2 years old.  Give it a few more GHB and then we will get AoS2.0 I think.

 

Totems as well, another Keyword that, for the most part, has no purpose .

I agree with you that fundamentally changing the Core rules is too soon, I do however think that the Generals Handbook can act as a Core Rule changer because in many ways it allready does. Our initial Allegiance "Core" rules for example have been changed allready.  

Most Keywords do have a purpose, Totems in Chaos actually do quite a lot of different things (not just for Blades of Khorne) but overall I think it's a very smart move to continue with more Keywords as opposed to less. With the prime reason behind it being that if it makes visually sence, ideally, the Keywords should make sence too.

If Warscrolls have more Keywords what you essentially generate is more possabilities for future design. The less they have the more restrictive their impact will be in the game. 
 

[stato]

38 minutes ago, Kanamorf said:

I don't know, is there not a Breyherd unit that gets bonus to hit vs units that are carrying a totem?

 

I think that more of this sort of use of Keywords would be great

Probably, but not sure why a Freeguild general needs it when he is carrying a banner 

[stratigo]

Age of Sigmar's release puzzles me. I compare how 8th edition is rapidly chugging away and putting out models and most especially codexes at a drastically rapid click, and then I see how sigmar has.... well.... lagged. In everything. It feels like GW is 100 percent loathe to give the old model lines anything (except chaos demons and, like, skaven.) and are desperate for you to buy only new armies, grudgingly handing out goodies for the old lines, but.... well... they didn't have to. They could have tackled it 40k style. You get a couple of armies that are new model launches, and then rapidly put together playable army lists with all new fluff and rules working with all those old model lines. But they didn't. And I don't know why.

 

EDIT: Oh and they gave the lizardmen their own book and army. Though... years on. Where was this treatment for.... say... death, elves, dwarves, et cetera. They needed to do this in the first year

[Killax]

The reason AoS wasnt tackled it 40k style is because it indeed left WFB fans in the cold and WFB sales didnt come close to 40k.

To date if AoS wasnt popular enough they could have kept it as a gateway game, which the initial AoS format had a lot of designs from, as in thake what you want, all scenery does something too.

What happened though is that more cared for WFB/AoS as even GW expected, so things get fleshed out in a WFB/AoS way. Were seeing true factions again, customisation and factions who are very much akin to their WFB form are doing well.

[stratigo]

AoS WASN'T popular though. Not at first. It grew, but slowly from what I understand. It would have gone much better if it wasn't developed so... well... half assed. If it didn't take so long to get points. If the armies had come out faster and more completely.

It just... bothers me. The reason I avoided AoS isn't that I was just jaded over the end times. I was, but I could get over that. It was just the lack of... any serious take on the game. It took 40k 8th edition to get me back into GW gaming, and from there I took more of an interest in AoS, until I finally caved and bought a bunch of kharadrons

[chord]

AOS was pretty popular in my area pre-GHB vs after.  Of course the new 40K has taken pretty much all the attention away from AOS .

I would say AOS was popular just not amongst the WHFB group which wants complex rules, points, competition only, List building etc

 

[BunkhouseBuster]

41 minutes ago, chord said:

AOS was pretty popular in my area pre-GHB vs after.  Of course the new 40K has taken pretty much all the attention away from AOS .

Yeah, I'm all for having multiple game systems from GW, but I'm ready for 40K to take a backseat to AoS for a month or two.  Yes, we have been getting plenty of new stuff this year in the midst of a new 40K Edition (Firestorm, Blightwar, the Allies bundles for older armies, GH 2017, et al.) but AoS is, in my area, being held onto by the few of us loyal players who are either sticking with just it for our primary game or players with enought time/money to handle multiple systems.

My personal feelings for 40K 8th Edition aside, I think the best part of Age of Sigmar is that not everyone plays it.  While that can be a hindrance on the variety of armies you can play against, it is nice to have a small local group of like-minded players that are looking for the same thing in a game that you are.

[Spiky Norman]

4 hours ago, Auticus said:

AOS still isn't overall popular.  It generates more sales than WHFB, but WHFB was played a lot more and there were communities of it around.  WHFB didn't sell largely because the 2nd hand market was overloaded with cheap models, and the historical based nature of a lot of armies meant you could buy Perry miniatures to pull off a human force and it would look awesome for 1/8 of the cost.   From 2010 - 2014 we had a pretty steady stream of new WHFB players but out of 10 maybe one or two would actually buy their models from GW.  The others bought them on ebay or a local selling an extra army or a cheaper alternative like Perry or Mantic.

So I'm glad AOS has sales now, but its still a system that registers to a lot of places as strongly as Dragon Rampant or Frostgrave while being behind games like Kings of War, which sucks. 

 

You're writing this is as if it was fact, when it's just guesswork and opinion. Opinion that comes from experiences with a community that seems extremely skewed based off of what you often describe. Now you like everyone else is entitled to voice their own opinions of course, but let's label it clearly as such when speaking in such broad statements.

Personally I don't think GW should make efforts to draw in old WHFB players more than they already have. Especially if its players who cannot see the complexity that AoS can bring to the table, because they're blinding by the 4 pages and want a lot of extra rules for the base mechanics of the game. That the complexity sits in the combination of all the warscrolls is much better than a weighty tome for the base game, if you ask me.

That's not to say that the base rules of AoS cannot be improved upon, it almost always can, but it should be minor changes that keeps the foundation short and sweet, with a wealth of extra rules from all the books they already put out, that you can sprinkle on top to make the game you want to play.

[VBS]

1 hour ago, Auticus said:

There's no doubt in my mind AOS sells better than WHFB ever did, but thats not because its population boomed, its because there was no 2nd hand market for stormcast and the like and they are moving from their old aesthetic that 3rd party companies don't produce.

I'll just quote this bit, since I think it is totally on spot.

If you check AoS releases, they are effectively remaking all their "fantasy" game. Discontinued old WHFB and making new armies that have nothing to do with the old game. In a few years time (10 or 15, I do not know), AoS might be facing the same 2nd hand market flood + other companies supplying similar aesthetic/type models. AoS strength right now is it's novelty model-wise compared to other companies or older well-established games.

It also explains why its production schedule has nothing to do with w40k, so comparing both and complaining it gets more love is useless. 40K didn't dismantle a whole production line and had no intention of starting from zero. And even if Death Guard and all that get some love, those fast Codex releases are basically just rule support that can be churned out quickly as the model baseline is still intact, unlike AoS. I think GW has very different intentions for the two games.  

[chord]

I think the release schedule ties into the storyline.   As the realmgate wars progressed we got the releases tied into the storyline.

Of course with Order winning the Season of War I think we messed up their plans (they said it changed the order of things).  So we got KO and Tzeentch prior to any storyline release.

With the new storyline will come new models.

[someone2040]

10 hours ago, VBS said:

It also explains why its production schedule has nothing to do with w40k, so comparing both and complaining it gets more love is useless. 40K didn't dismantle a whole production line and had no intention of starting from zero. And even if Death Guard and all that get some love, those fast Codex releases are basically just rule support that can be churned out quickly as the model baseline is still intact, unlike AoS. I think GW has very different intentions for the two games.  

Pretty much this.

40k can churn out codexes like no tomorrow, because all the armies are basically the same as they were yesterday, they just need to update some fluff to see what they've been doing since warpstorms hit the galaxy. The codexes are basically recycled content.

They can't do this for Age of Sigmar, because they're world building. None of the factions are the same ones that we've had for 20+ years. They're all new, and need new fluff, new artwork, new rules, and preferably, new models also!

 

So I don't particularly hold the 40k release schedule against AoS. They're in completely different situations. But I'm pretty disappointed that there's not going to be a new AoS army release in the 2nd half of 2017. At the very least I would've liked to have seen a 'rebadged' old world army book if they can't afford to put out new models for some reason.

[WoollyMammoth]

My community has two big tabletop stores and a GW. I have a FB group exclusively for AoS and it has 133 members. A local guy throws a tournament at GW every month that typically has 6-8 players. I host and event every Wed night that has a group of about 10 guys that cycle through. A guy near one of the tabletop stores hosted a 'slow grow' league that saw 50 members. Hes currently doing a Path to Glory thing that I'm not a part of but I'm sure it has a healthy number of participants. AoS is a very niche thing, this size of a community is about as great as you could ever ask for. Compared to pre-GH1 when I got a total of three guys to play over the course of a year, this is amazing.

Communities are generally driven by individuals. When people get the word out and host events and game nights, it gets people motivated to participate. There is a lot of people with the will, they just need someone to show them the way.

For those of us promoting AoS play, we are working a bit against the current right now. 40k is being showered with beautiful models and books, while AoS is put on pause for their promotion of this new side game Shadespire. The last army to come out - Kharadron Overlords - was a while ago and now just got a hard kick to the balls with the new GH. Almost everyone but Fyreslayers and Seraphon have more to be pissed about than excited about. Though I see these players, lizard people and naked dwarfs are very niche armies that are not going to jumpstart the community. As a far as old players waiting for new stuff, that is simply unlikely to ever happen. The only old armies they are supporting are the 4 chaos gods; almost nothing else from the old world has received a single new model. If people are going to get into AoS, they are going to have to start a new army. 

After this year ends and they have finished pushing Shadespire I feel like they will release a ton of stuff; new elf, deathrattle and nurgle armies, maybe even more. The story is going to get real interesting next year when it switches over to the year of Slaanesh and starts the new death storylines. Unfortunately the next 3-4 months are not likely to be quiet until then. 

[TerrorPenguin]

1 hour ago, WoollyMammoth said:

The last army to come out - Kharadron Overlords - was a while ago and now just got a hard kick to the balls with the new GH. Almost everyone but Fyreslayers and Seraphon have more to be pissed about than excited about.

I respectfully disagree. Kharadron took a slight nerf and are still doing well and able to compete top tier. 

I play death and have more to be excited about than pissed about in this new book. I'm enjoying building soulblight lists and even considering Nighthaunt. No they're not top tier but I didn't really ever think they would be. Yes the compendium stuff is frustrating but lets be honest it was always a strong possibility it would go in that direction.

The problem is (and I can't remember whether I've said this in the previous 11 pages!) this book was just too hyped. By January we were talking about the issues the next generals handbook would solve, it was never going to live up to the expectation and I think was made worse by the 40K release being pushed back which pushed this back further.

[RuneBrush]

22 hours ago, stratigo said:

AoS WASN'T popular though. Not at first. It grew, but slowly from what I understand. It would have gone much better if it wasn't developed so... well... half assed. If it didn't take so long to get points. If the armies had come out faster and more completely.

19 hours ago, Auticus said:

AOS still isn't overall popular.  It generates more sales than WHFB, but WHFB was played a lot more and there were communities of it around.  WHFB didn't sell largely because the 2nd hand market was overloaded with cheap models, and the historical based nature of a lot of armies meant you could buy Perry miniatures to pull off a human force and it would look awesome for 1/8 of the cost.   

I think my answer to both these comments is "in your opinion within your local area/social group".  Every little community and group is going to be different with the perceived popularity of AoS and what aspects are liked/disliked.

Let's face it, AoS wasn't going to be an instant hit - I don't think that kind of thing happens very often in today's day and age of crowd funded games.  GW went with a radically different approach and attitude to the game which people still compare to Warhammer FB (which is a bit like comparing monopoly to snakes and ladders or draughts/chequers to chess).  The game is still in its infancy - it's not even a toddler in comparison to some games.

Yes, GW makes mistakes - they know it and we know it, but to say it's not popular/rubbish/needs changes all the time comes across really badly to both new and existing players, you might as well say "welcome to the club - the game's awful and you'll quickly find lots of things don't work very well"... I'm not having a dig at the two posts I quoted, but I've spent the last 45 minutes catching up because I was at a funeral yesterday and the vast majority of comments felt like they were critical in some way.

I believe that we need to be honest with saying when there are things we don't like or not happy with but lets try and focus on what's opinion and what's fact.  Is AoS popular?  I believe so, that's my opinion and based on that I fairly frequently see Twitter/Facebook posts about people who have played an AoS-based game at home or round a club - a lot more than I see about playing a game of WHFB, Dropzone or other similar games.  To my eyes that makes AoS popular in it's own right.

[Siorra]

16 hours ago, Auticus said:

If other USA residents could pipe up and talk about their booming AOS population, I'd love to hear it though!  It may be that its just kept on the down-low for whatever reason right?  I know there are a few tournaments I can travel a few hundred miles to attend but used to be you didn't have to do that.

See this seems to be the key difference that I can see. The US is a very large place, and if it had the same amount of AoS as the UK, your gamer density would be very spread out. My perspective of the UK community seems to be thriving, with tournaments doing rather well.

AoS is what has got me back into Games Workshop games. I have zero intention of playing 40k because I prefer the aesthetic and simpler rules of AoS. AoS scream easy to learn difficult to master, and I love that about any game. For anyone who plays PC games, it's why I prefered HotS over LoL -  it was just easier to jump in to.

As for the GH2017 "honeymoon", I agree with TerrorPenguin, it was just overhyped. The General's Handbook was never meant to be a game changing expansion; it's more of a balancing patch. To expect any more from it was just naive on our part as the community. What we can agree on, however, is the lack of any models past Shadespire and Blightwar is getting us down, and we can just hope for a more steady release schedule in 2018.

[Captain Marius]

2 hours ago, WoollyMammoth said:

After this year ends and they have finished pushing Shadespire I feel like they will release a ton of stuff; new elf, deathrattle and nurgle armies, maybe even more. The story is going to get real interesting next year when it switches over to the year of Slaanesh and starts the new death storylines. Unfortunately the next 3-4 months are not likely to be quiet until then. 

I think theres a good chance we wont see any Slaanesh stuff until 2019 or even 2020. They seem to be working on a Chaos God each year, and I reckon after Nurgle it will be the turn of the Great Horned Rat.

The fluff in Blightwar specifically mentions that the Skaven are focusing their attentions on Ulgu, as Khorne/Aqshy, Nurgle/Ghyran and Tzeentch/Metal. With all the rumours pointing to shadow elves being before light elves, as well as new skaven models in Silver Tower and Shadespire, Im thinking we wont see Slaanesh til they get round to Hysh.

And seeing how GW is quite happy to put 8+ months between army releases, thats why i wouldnt expect to see owt til 2019 at the earliest!

[Killax]

7 minutes ago, Captain Marius said:

I think theres a good chance we wont see any Slaanesh stuff until 2019 or even 2020. They seem to be working on a Chaos God each year, and I reckon after Nurgle it will be the turn of the Great Horned Rat.

The fluff in Blightwar specifically mentions that the Skaven are focusing their attentions on Ulgu, as Khorne/Aqshy, Nurgle/Ghyran and Tzeentch/Metal. With all the rumours pointing to shadow elves being before light elves, as well as new skaven models in Silver Tower and Shadespire, Im thinking we wont see Slaanesh til they get round to Hysh.

And seeing how GW is quite happy to put 8+ months between army releases, thats why i wouldnt expect to see owt til 2019 at the earliest!

That´s actually quite likely. I think the armies we can expect are more or less those not covered as an Allegiance in GH2017. Making "new" Aelves, Nurgle, Moonclan and Deathrattle quite the likely 4 candidates for what 2018 has in store for us. Which means Slaanesh has to wait quite long but then again I do expect some new Fiends of Slaanesh as I deem it more likely that Daemons of Chaos will also come with a few new releases, such as new Fiends of Slaanesh and Plague Beasts, which is likely to occur in 2018 just not something "massive". 

In general I think GW will continue the pace and can do so because there are some new army releases but lines arn't completely updated.

Back to the original topic though, to me GH2017 has been a very much improved GH2016. The step itself is smaller because a lot of the armies have large ranges who still work well but this time around the details are added so more armies can be competitive. So far Ive seen very succesful Free People, Fyreslayers, Serpahon, Slaanesh, Skryre and Ironjawz locally and those names most certainly didn't appear as full fledged contenders last year.

[Chris Tomlin]

GH2017: the honeymoon is over...and now, so is the thread.

This has run its course guys.

Hopefully for those of you who needed to do so, you've now expunged all your ill feeling towards the game you're spending your day posting about!